14.04 - Day 90 - LA to Las Vegas
Sunday 14th April - Mission Viejo - LAX, California - Las Vegas, Nevada (Day 90)
End of home life with Daniel and Maggie and time to start our road trip east. The kids have one last play until we bid farewell to our generous hosts, that generosity extending to one last taxi duty to ferry us to the Hertz depot at LA Airport.
Back down to a team of four we get to the rental desk to be told the car I’d reserved six months ago isn’t available. Despite two emails post booking to confirm the Tesla Y is locked in, plus I’d been receiving emails almost daily at the end to welcome me to our Tesla Y journey. Hertz had announced they were delisting their fleet (hence my emails) but I’d hoped / expected the mass sell off hadn’t occurred yet. We’re offered another EV, but we press for a Tesla - we’d planned to utilise the supercharging network which means faster charging to get us back on the road sooner.
After a two hour wait they find a Model 3 instead; by now we’re grateful to be able to get going as it’s a healthy 4.5 hours to Vegas our next stop. The kids are just happy because it is blue. After all the driving in Daniel and Maggie’s Model 3, it’s an easy drive east, the traffic eventually thinning out. As we approach the mountains we get soaked in a few downpours, but after we’ve passed that then landscape opens up to wide expanses of the Californian countryside.
With 15% battery we stop en route an hour and a half before Vegas at Baker (planned). The charging station has 40 chargers just off the freeway. The first charger doesn’t work. But another driver tells is he had the same problem so we try another. And another. After about 8 attempts we’re confident it’s not the charger but us or the car.
Sheepishly we call Daniel and also another driver offers to help but to no joy. In a brief summary of a very frustrating few hours - after 4 calls to Hertz (who is turn have someone from Tesla on the other line), a tow truck is called to pick us up. However after an hour it hasn’t shown and a call to the tow company, we discover they cancelled the call out because Hertz didn’t answer the phone to confirm payment.
All the while the kids are hungry and once fed (there is one small fast food joint within walking distance), Seb falls asleep in the back whilst Sienna reads before succumbing to sleep (this is around 10:30pm). Another call to Hertz and another tow truck is ordered.
So after pulling in to charge at 17:30, already after a two hour delay at the airport, at midnight the friendly Enrique from Commerce Towing pulls the Tesla onto his flatbed truck and he drives with us in his cab the remaining hour and a half to Vegas airport where the Hertz office is.
After reversing it down (it still works, we just don’t have enough charge to drive a distance) we take it into the multi-storey where Hertz are based and I find a guy on a desk, who, to his credit, when I explain what happened, offers me any number of cars though he’s out of Teslas. So I grab a Nissan Rogue, we transfer the kids and luggage over and drive the 13 minutes to our hotel at the north end of the strip.
It’s about 2:30am on a Monday morning, but the lights of Vegas still shine brightly. A quick check in at Ahern Hotel and by 3am we’re finally crashing into bed. An inauspicious start to our EV journey.